Chinese scientists will produce the world's first cloned giant panda in one or two years, Friday's Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Chen Dayuan, a researcher with the Research Institute of Animals under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and a team leader on giant panda cloning, explained that they were just one step away from success.

"If everything goes right, the world's first cloned giant panda cub will be produced within one or two years," said Chen.

In a speech about "cloning and ethics" at a seminar held in Beijing Thursday morning, Chen explained in great detail the giant panda cloning program.

"It is necessary to carry out research on trans-species cloning technology because it is unrealistic to carry out intra-species cloning of giant pandas due to the scarcity of the giant pandas species and a difficulty of obtaining recipient egg cells," he went on.

According to Chen, his team has cultivated an embryo using a somatic cell from a just-dead adult female giant panda, integrating it first with a rabbit egg cell and later with a cat egg cell.

Analysis shows that the embryo cultivated is definitely the embryo of a giant panda.

"The embryo has been successfully implanted in a cat womb," said Chen, who admitted that he was unsure what new problems would arise from the growth process.

"We do not intend to replace the natural propagation of giant pandas with cloning," emphasized Chen, adding that he only hoped the technology of cloning could help in rescuing the endangered species.

There are now fewer than 1,000 giant pandas living in the wild, mostly in the mountainous areas in west China's Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces.

Chinese scientists have been attempting to create more pandas through artificial propagation since the early 1960s. But artificial propagation alone has not effectively stopped their decline.

(People's Daily May 24, 2002)